A few Sundays ago, I bought a book entitled "Love Letters of Great Men and Women", edited by Ursula Doyle and inspired by Sex and the City. The book is divided in two parts: first, love letters of great man, from Pliny the Younger to his wife Calpurnia to the letters by Chesterton to Frances Blogg; second, love letters of great women, from Katherine of Aragon to Henry the Eight, to the letters by Rosa Luxemburg to Leo Jogiches. I intendly looked for any sign of Spaniards, but there wasn't any.
Then, it came the turn of Jonhson's Heroes, but I could not find any Spaniards among the chapters.
The fact that Anglosaxon do not find any Spaniard capable of loving or carrying deeds to the fullest, at least to the extend of contribute to a overall anthology, get me dumbfound and upset. Obviously, Don Quixote belongs to fiction. The conquest and build of an Empire in 50 years do not count. The reality of my parents being married and loving to each other, as the majority of people of their generation, for 40 years, whilst European contemporaries do get married and divorce almost simultaneously, do not bear any recognition. Nor even Juana, la Loca, for Christ's sake.
Only two Spaniards Paul Johnson met and did write something about in his Brief Lives: Franco and Picasso. The judgement is, interestingly, opposite to the general understanding, as the balance is favorable to Franco and against Picasso.
This is what Johnson writes about Picasso: he "was probable the most evil man I ever actually came across. (...) While he was painting Guernica, two of his women, whom he had deliberately set upon each other, were fighting on the floor of his studio, to his delight. He (...) did more harm to art than all the Goths and Vandals, the Puritan iconoclasts and the totalitarian thugs combined".
However, Franco "ruled Spain for longer than anyone else in her history, and during a period of the greatest difficulty. (...) He must be accounted, overall, as one of the most successful politicians of the century". Johnson met Franco in 1950 when he was in the British Army, destined in Gibraltar, and Franco said to him: "I want to create a large middle class, as you have in England. Then we will have a tranquil state in which democracy can work".
One of the remarks Johnson makes about Franco is he being extraordinarily eccentric. For example, he wrote letters to the Daily Telegraph (a much kind press towards Johnson) and sign them Thomas Babington Macaulay. Apparently, Franco admire sense of humor the most about the English.
It would be great to have access to such letters! Does anyone have it or know how?
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Well, my dear Albert:
ReplyDeleteKatherine of Aragon was a Spaniard... .